Emerging Tech Companies Outside of the Valley

Tech is expanding outside the Silicon Valley and even Seattle at an increasing rate. With companies and investors setting sights on new cities, tech workers now have more options when it comes to choosing where to work. Here are four companies thriving outside the traditional tech hubs in the four major regions of the United States.

SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk in 2002 with the goal of enabling people to inhabit other planets. Right now, the company focuses on designing, manufacturing, and launching both rockets and spacecraft. SpaceX has several contracts with NASA, including a contract to send astronauts to the International Space Station and back. Among its achievements: the first privately funded company to return a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit (Falcon 9 Flight 2) and the first privately funded payload to be launched into solar orbit (Falcon Heavy Test Flight). The company employs over 5,000 people between its headquarters just outside of Los Angeles, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Vandenberg Air Force Base, and its rocket-development location in Texas. As of 2018, the company is valued at over $21 billion.

G2 Crowd provides verified crowdsourced reviews for business software, helping companies find the right business solutions based on user recommendations. The platform has more than 300,000 reviews to date on more than 25,000 products, including file hosting services like Dropbox and e-commerce solutions like Stripe. The company also provides reviews for business services, including marketing, staffing, and translations. The company was founded in 2011 by five former employees of BigMachines, now acquired by Oracle. In February 2015, former LinkedIn executive, Adrienne Weissman joined G2 Crowd as the organization’s new chief marketing officer. In 2017, the company secured a $30 million investment led by VC Accel with participation from LinkedIn. This brings its total funding to date to $45.8 million.

Pindrop specializes in fraud detection by analyzing and authenticating voice. The company uses proprietary audio analysis technology to analyze 146 different features of a phone call. The service is already being adopted by financial institutions, government agencies, and even retailers so that customers won’t need to be authenticated with passwords and personal information. In 2016, Pindrop doubled its customer base and continued to see revenues increase. Pindrop has a total funding of $122.8 million. Martin Casado of Andreessen Horowitz and John Chambers, formerly of Cisco Systems, now serve as board members. Marc Andreessen has joined as board observer.

WeWork is a global network of co-working spaces that started in New York City in 2010. Often known as the “Airbnb of office space”, the company provides workspaces for freelancers, startups, small businesses, and large enterprises. All WeWork members have access to events, workshops, and an internal social network, which help build a community within the spaces. This $21 billion company received a $4.4 billion investment from SoftBank last summer and is opening its second headquarters in the new Salesforce tower located in San Francisco. WeWork continues to expand with new ventures: WeLive, a co-living space, and Rise by We, its gym. Still to come is WeGrow, a private elementary school set to open in fall 2018. WeWork has more than 2,000 employees and has locations in 23 U.S. cities and 21 countries.